Very proud of the kids today, if I may be somewhat boastful. Dara is just being a happy girl in general, and now has about 6 or 7 definite words. It’s continuing to be great to hear her chat come along and get more of an idea of her personality.

And Mr. Toby is doing great at school too. We went to a party for his class yesterday afternoon, and firstly it was so good to see how much fun he was having with all his friends and how much they liked being with him; secondly we heard from his teacher that she had just re-assessed his reading progress. When he started in September he was about level A in reading – levels 1 and 2 are foundation; levels 3, A, B and C are kindergarten level. After a few weeks, one month ago, he was at level C. Levels D through I are first grade level; J onwards is second grade. His assessment yesterday showed that he was at level H. I’m very pleased at how he’s doing – partly to see his progress, but also because he’s just enjoying reading so much. It’s really rewarding that he’ll pick up books and work through them, and is feeling so good about his abilities.

I haven’t posted pictures of the kids in absolutely ages. We have been taking photos, I just haven’t gotten around to posting. Tonight, however, I thought I should just get on with it and posted up the pics I took at dinner time (having a speeeeeeedy new machine certainly helps too). Anyway, here are the photos – enjoy. And here’s a bonus preview:

Dara is the grand old age of one today! She’s doing great – we had her checkup at the doctor’s yesterday and all is well. She’s 70th percentile for height, and 30th for weight, so a lot like her dad. Walking well, and she knows and uses 6 or 7 words so far – again a lot like her dad. Too much of a rush to get going this morning to do presents, but thanks to everyone who has sent things – we’ll be getting to them this evening.

Also, happy Talk Like A Pirate Day! Avast! In Dara’s class they’ve been having pirate events all week, and Dara’s wearing a pirate t-shirt today.

Took this little video at the zoo over the weekend – they have a little kids’ playroom, where the children can play dress-up and look at cool x-rays of some of the zoo animals. Anyway, the sound quality of this isn’t great because it’s done with a regular digital still camera, but the picture’s pretty good I think. Oh, and she’s usually steadier with walking than this, but she’d had a couple of martinis right beforehand. Enjoy:

A lot of Dara’s time over the last few days has been taken up with practicing walking, and it’s going pretty well I think. When you stand her up she takes a moment to clarify her balance, with some optional additional time for a big grin and maybe a bit of clapping, then a totter forwards. She’s now reliably doing three or four steps, and can go fairly far if everything works well. She still defaults to speed-crawling, but hey, she’s only a baby.

Sorry, not ignoring you – just busy busy and busy and I keep forgetting to post updates.

So here, very quickly, is how things are standing. Busy at work – all excellent, but just a lot to do. Really enjoying it though.

Toby and Dara are doing great. Dara is now 11 months, and doing loads. She loves playing with her big brother and he’s great with her. She’s doing a lot of standing, not quite ready for walking yet although she’s taken a couple of steps a few times. She seems to be pretty happy zooming around crawling, so who knows how long it’ll take. She’s still very chatty – all sounding very meaningful and important but mostly incomprehensible, in a very charming way. She’s starting to be able to do a few words though – ball and bear are quite definite, and last night she said her name very clearly a few times when she saw herself in the mirror. Toby is still “babaa”.

Toby himself is doing very well too. He’s just started his last week of daycare, in preparation for starting kindergarten next week. He’s extremely excited, we’ll see how he handles the anticipation and a bit of nervousness. He’s still zooming around – swimming really well and also a master of Wii tennis. He has lots of plans and schemes floating around in his head, and now that he’s getting older he doesn’t have so many amusing verbal mistakes, although yesterday he was telling us how to get somewhere and he said “first you need to find a case of stairs”.